Robert Mitchum plays as U.S. ambassador to Israel whose efforts at reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians run afoul of the somewhat questionable ambitions of security advisor Rock Hudson. Meanwhile, Mitchum's wife Ellen Burstyn embarks upon an affair with a PLO leader. When this fact comes to Mitchum's attention, he refuses to pay the prescribed "hush money", sparking a deadly chain reaction. You may need a microscope to discern this, but The Ambassador was adapted from Elmore Leonard's crime novel 52 Pick Up. Though a more faithful-to-the-source cinemazation of the Leonard book was lensed in 1986, The Ambassador remains the better of the two versions.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide